Homeland: "Clean Skin" Review

You'll feel dirty after watching this episode.

(Apologies for the lateness of this review. And we can't even blame it on Abu Nazir -- just Comic-Con instead…)

Homeland continues to live up to the promise of its pilot with this third episode which, rather than backing away from the flip-flopped hero/villain dynamic set up in the premiere, kicks it up a notch while also showing us that it doesn't have cold feet when it comes to, ahem, executing some of its darker story threads.

Speaking of which, let's all take a moment of silence for poor Lynne, the glorified call girl with a heart of gold whose ticket was punched this week. I for one was genuinely afraid that Lynne would survive the tenuous position Carrie had put her in, and if that sounds cold then so be it. The fact is, if Lynne had lived through her story thread -- spying on her Saudi prince for Carrie, all while mistakenly under the assumption that she had some kind of CIA protection because Carrier lied to her and said she did -- it would've weakened the overall premise of the show and possibly reduced it to generic network television parameters. As it is, Homeland's writers-producers had the conviction to stick to their guns, quite literally, and see Carrie's awful, terrible failure all the way through.

And this is just the third episode! Meanwhile, Brody spends this episode mostly acting innocuous. If he is a sleeper agent, as has been implied previously, you wouldn't know it from this segment. Here he and his wife Jessica are gearing up for a big TV interview with MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell (who plays himself), and Brody basically acts like the perfect soldier who has returned home to a perfect family. Though there's not much about this family that is perfect once you get them off the interview couch…

That starts with Brody himself, whose sexual proclivities are, well… Let's just say as far as he's concerned, there's no Morena Baccarin required. Baccarin's Jessica is certainly put off by this, but she's also having to deal now with the fact that their rebellious daughter Dana has let on that she knows all about her mom's unfaithfulness when Brody was gone. Certainly this knowledge is helping to fuel Dana's sour outlook and propensity for smoking doobies and being generally an Angry Young Teen. This is a state of mind that apparently only her long-lost, dear old dad can abate. The two form a bond in the episode, as Brody tells Dana that not only does he remember that grade-school play she did right before he left for the war, but it practically kept him alive thinking about it while he was in captivity these past eight years.

It's a great, heartfelt scene, particularly as Brody remarks that all of those nearly decade-old memories, images that were frozen in his mind all this time… they're all gone now. So here we see a Brody who is more human and relatable than ever before, and by the end of the episode Dana totally plays along and is the good daughter in the interview with O'Donnell (despite threats to the contrary). Which makes one think… Did Brody just totally work his daughter so as to get that response from her? So as to not rock the boat and avoid jeopardizing a potential larger terrorist plan? Yikes. Maybe I'm just getting as paranoid as Carrie.

Carrie is on the edge this week not just because of Lynne's fate, but also due to how Saul is treating her ever since he realized she had lied to him. It's cold shoulder time at counterterrorism HQ, and when Carrie confronts her old mentor about it he finally says that after all those years of him protecting her and teaching her, she destroyed it when she lied to him. "When you say you understand," he growls at her, "is that what you mean?"

Of course, he's completely right, and Carrie just keeps making things worse for herself and those around her. How long until her surveillance tech Virgil winds up taking the fall for her? Or Saul himself even? And she can cry all she wants about how Lynne wasn't "just an escort" and she wishes she could tell the girl's bereaved parents that. But does she want to do that to make them feel better about the death of their daughter, or to make herself feel better? It's a credit to Claire Danes and Damian Lewis that we still like these characters despite everything we've seen them do.

And meanwhile, the plot is twisting and escalating, as a new connection to Abu Nazir is discovered (by the audience anyway) and a happy young couple buys their dream home (of destruction?).